Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

When a leader is powerful enough, he (she) thinks that even the laws of economics will bend to her will:

The Soviet Union tried price controls. Richard Nixon tried price controls. It doesn't end well.

Democrat says Republicans use hateful language; Then she calls them "crazy crackers"

Karen Finney, former Director of Communications at the Democrat National Committee, was on MSNBC and, speaking of Republicans, declared:

“Those crazy crackers on the right, like if they start with their very hateful language…”

It must not have occurred to her that "crazy crackers" is itself hateful language and that she was the one using it.

Some say the phrase "crazy crackers" goes beyond hateful; they say "cracker" is racist.  For that, Ms. Finney apologized, as Fox News reports:

As long as hateful rhetoric is such a convenient substitute for rational argument, I don't expect politics ever to become more civil.

A more complete video of Ms. Finney's MSNBC appearance, showing the context of her remarks, is here. Ms. Finney is not a marginal figure. In addition to being a former Director of Communications for the DNC, Ms. Finney is columnist for The Hill and a commentator for Politico, MSNBC and The Huffington Post.

Third party payer systems are expensive

The Atlantic provides this chart (hat tip: Instapundit) comparing inflation of college textbooks, medical care, and new homes with the general consumer price index:

While professors are responsible for selecting college textbooks, they are not responsible for paying for them.  The students are.  Under normal circumstances, a professor will never even see the price tag on the book he selects.  The result is rapid inflation.

Medical care is similar.  Physicians and patients may select treatments or tests but, under the current system, neither pays for them.  The insurance company does.  The result is rapid inflation.

In other words, incentives matter.

This is a fact that seems to be obvious to everyone except liberals.

PREVIOUSLY on liberal thought as it relates to economics:
•Centuries pass but liberalism is unchanged
•Sayet's theory of liberalism
•Given a choice between working and free money, people choose free money
•Higher taxes yield less revenue
•Homeless flock to city with generous benefits
•Student test scores improve despite school funding decrease

How liberals think about taxes

Norah O'Donnell

Norah O'Donnell is the Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News.  On tonight's newscast, she explained her view of tax cuts:

President Obama is calling on Congress to pass a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000 a year and individuals earning less than $200,000. Those tax cuts expire at the end of December and the cost to taxpayers for the year: $150 billion.…

But Republicans -- including Mitt Romney -- want to make permanent all of the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for households earning over $250,000. The cost to taxpayers? An additional $850 billion over the next ten years.… [Emph. added]

Yes, that is right:  She thinks that "tax cuts" occur at a "cost to taxpayers."  This doesn't appear to be a misspeak: she said it twice, once with respect to Obama's proposal and again with respect to Romney's.

Of course, as liberals are wont to do, she is confusing "taxpayers" with the government.  The tax cuts reduce government revenues and thus the government might, in some twisted accounting, think of them as a cost.

I expect that she thinks of herself as an "unbiased reporter" but, with thinking such as this, she illustrates why liberals cannot be "unbiased" even if they try.

More at NewsBusters.

The Angry Liberal

One might have thought that the four liberal Supreme Court Justices would have been happy that Chief Justice Roberts switched sides to join them in upholding Obamacare. They weren't. Instead, they were furious. Here is Justice Ginsburg excoriating Roberts as "rigid," "crabbed," "specious," and "stunningly retrogressive":

"According to the Chief Justice the Commerce Clause does not permit that preservation. This rigid reading of the Clause makes scant sense and is stunningly retrogressive. . . . The Chief Justice's crabbed reading of the Commerce Clause harks back to the era in which the Court routinely thwarted Congress' efforts to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it. . . . The Chief Justice's novel constraint on Congress' commerce power gains no force from our precedent and for that reason alone warrants disapprobation. . . . The Chief Justice also calls the minimum coverage provision an illegitimate effort to make young, healthy individuals subsidize insurance premiums paid by the less hale and hardy. This complaint, too, is spurious. . . . Failing to learn from this history, the Chief Justice plows ahead with his formalistic distinction between those who are "active in commerce," and those who are not. . . . The Chief Justice accepts just such specious logic when he cites the broccoli horrible as a reason to deny Congress the power to pass the individual mandate. . . . If long on rhetoric, the Chief Justice's argument is short on substance."

The full text of the Court's decision is here (PDF). The above excerpt was collected by James Taranto.
Note the left's casual disregard for the constitution when Justice Ginsburg complains of Roberts' thwarting of efforts to "regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it."  The Constitution has no provision enabling regulations in favor of "labor" to override other Constitutional provisions.  Our Constitution is not Marxist.
As a side note, one of the left's justifications of Obamacare is that health care is expensive because of the high cost of the uninsured which is cost-shifted onto those who pay. However, Justice Ginsburg writes:

As a group, uninsured individuals annually consume more than $100 billion in health-care services, nearly 5% of the Nation's total.

In other words, even by Justice Ginsburg's numbers, the cost of the uninsured is a small fraction of healthcare costs and hardly a reason to destroy the system that the rest of us use.

Obama supporters explain why you should vote Obama in 2012. From the streets of San Francisco!

This video was taken during Obama's last two visits to the SF Bay Area. The SF Tea Party was at both to protest (see here and here). The highlight of the video though has to be the Obama supporters trying to explain what Obama's greatest accomplishments are:

(From TeaPartyTelevision)

PREVIOUSLY on recent SF Bay Area events:
•In the streets of San Francisco: a protest against Obama!
•Obama visits the San Francisco Peninsula and a Tea Party breaks out
•Global warming provokes laughter, even in the San Francisco Bay Area
•OccupyFail: the "general strike" that wasn't
•San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party
•San Francisco: inmates run asylum
•SF Churches rally: has a second front opened in the war for freedom?
•Reluctant California bureaucrats are shamed into saying the Pledge of Allegiance

Liberal minds think alike?

Deadline.com reports (hat tip: Instapundit):

Another Miami-area TV journalist has been fired as a result of a local NBC affiliate’s broadcast of a misleading edited version of George Zimmerman’s 911 call the night Trayvon Martin was killed. Local TV station WTVJ veteran Jeff Burnside was fired Friday following an investigation of the station’s separate airing of the conversation that was edited in much the same way as the Today show’s broadcast that resulted in the firing of an unidentified NBC News producer based in Miami. Several other employees were disciplined in that incident. The NBC affiliate acknowledged the station independently made the same questionable edits to Zimmerman’s call to police that were widely denounced when the network’s Today show aired its version of the clip last month.

I see two possibilities: (1) there is a replacement for JournoList that tells reporters what to do; or (2) due to both their personal biases and the pressure to produce "newsworthy" stories, dishonesty is second nature to journalists. I don't rule out the former but I lean toward the latter.

UPDATE: A third NBC employee has been fired from the network after yet another misleadingly edited George Zimmerman 911 tape surfaced from the Trayvon Martin shooting.

PREVIOUSLY on news bias:
•How reporters see the tea party vs. the occupiers
•How reporters see the tea party
•ABC news: 14 years of liberalism reviewed
•CNN's anti-semite
•At Cox Newspapers, they took this story seriously
•How reporters avoid reality
•News reporters and the liberal echo chamber in action
•Salon has a sexual fantasy about Palin as a dominatrix
•If only hate could change false to true
•Ignorance at McClatchy Newspapers
•Faking the news
•University study finds Fox more fair and balanced than ABC/CBS/NBC
•News media credibility at lowest level since polling began
•Living in a Fantasy World, II
•17% of US voters claim news media unbiased
•Unbiased MSM gets its "truth" from Media Matters for America

Left-wing racism: Marion Barry doubles down on "dirty" Asians

Earlier this month, District of Columbia city Councilman Marion Barry said that Asian businesses have to go:

We got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses or dirty shops. They ought to go. I'll just say that right now. We need African-American business people to be able to take their place.

Reason TV followed up with an interview in which former Mayor Barry explained:

There is a cultural difference between a number of ethnic groups, whether it is Hispanics, whether it is Asians, whether it's White people. There is a cultural difference because of our socialization, because of segregation, discrimination, all this adds to it, and it affects every aspect of our life.

He went on to explain that he brought the subject up because Asians own "95 percent" of the carry-out food shops are "owned or managed by Asians."

Watch the video:

Hat tip: Instapundit.

PREVIOUSLY on racism:
Dem. Rep. says Rep. Allen West resembles a hyena
•Is it racist to require a photo ID to buy drain cleaner?
•NY Times: Midwesterners have low-sloping foreheads
•Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!
•California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
•For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
•Occupy Portland protesters hurl racist taunts an African American
•Democrat: "Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men"
•The subtleties of White Privilege
•Racist cupcakes
•Is witch doctor image racist?
•Obama ally: "I hate white people...."
•“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
•"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
•A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
•San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
•"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

It's a paradox!

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Despite calls for stricter guns laws in response to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, firearm stocks are soaring as gun companies struggle to keep up with high demand.

"Despite . . ."? As James Taranto points out, shouldn't that be "because of . . ."?

PARADOX FLASHBACK: From 10 years ago on Instapundit:

"GUN PERMITS SURGE, BUT NOT VIOLENCE," the Detroit News reports.

"That's really the surprise," said Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano. "There are no altercations or incidents I've seen that are at all attributable to the law change. We thought there might be some."

PARADOX FLASHBACK 2:  A BBC headline from 2001 reads:

Handgun crime 'up' despite ban

The report begins:

A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned.

Taking guns away from law-abiding citizens emboldened criminals. What a surprise?

PREVIOUSLY on the paradoxes that vex liberal minds:
•Paradox: student test scores improve despite school funding decrease
•News report: Gun crime down "despite" increase in gun sales
•It's a paradox: Congress unpopular "despite record"
•"Ironically," conservatives and their children are happier
•It's a paradox!: Crime down when criminals are in jail.
•Paradox: crime is down (again)
•Paradox: few fraudulent voters if voters are required to have IDs

Obama explains social justice to a schoolgirl

PREVIOUSLY on social justice:
•Thomas Sowell defines "social justice"
•Obama as superhero in the service of social justice
•When "social justice" leads to mass starvation

Study: liberals are clueless about what conservatives think

At The Atlantic, Katherine Mangu-Ward discusses (hat tip: Instapundit) some interesting psychology research from the University of Virginia:

In an effort to figure out why conversations across the aisle so often degenerate into shouting matches, [psychologist Jonathan] Haidt (along with colleagues Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek) asked liberals and conservatives to try on each others' ideological shoes, answering a series of questions as they thought their opponents would:

The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the care and fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with statements such as "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or "justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. [Emph. added]

Haidt theorizes that this kind of blindness to the real motivations of others is driving discord in Washington and around the country.

I say this is part of a more general proposition: liberals live in a self-created fantasy in which they are the heroes. This is of course a pleasant fantasy. The need to protect that fantasy is why liberals tend to be so hostile to any information which threatens their status as heroes. For example, while conservatives accept the existence of CNN and MSNBC, liberals are in constant battle to banish Rush and Fox News through fair means or foul. Even if they don't listen to either, liberals know the information both present is a threat to their fantasy world.

RELATED: Instapundit has more on the same theme:

JEFF GOLDSTEIN RESPONDS TO STANLEY FISH: Progressivism And The Authoritarian Impulse. “Fish’s single standard, distilled and properly understood, is that liberals are (they’ll claim) morally superior by virtue of their very belief in their own political identities — which identity is tied to an ideology that, manifested politically, privileges governmental theft, sanctioned inequality as a function of tribal identity, and a giant foundational question beg: namely, that moral superiority comes from being on the left, so therefore being on the left means you can really do no fundamental moral wrong.” Progressivism is a religion that preaches salvation by faith, and utter damnation for the nonbelievers.

UPDATE: An illustration: “You and I are not racists. I just gave my imaginary child’s college fund to Barack Obama, and your mother is Nancy Pelosi. So of all the people in the world — we are not out to fuck black people.” Democrats can’t be racist. Just ask Bull Connor.

The last illustration above is Bill Maher, who just donated $1M to Obama, talking to videographer Alexandra Pelosi. Again, in their fantasy world, liberals are virtuous just because they are liberals.

PREVIOUSLY on liberals and their fantasy worlds:
•Obama's rich fantasy life
•Liberal talk show hosts and their paranoid fantasies
•Rep. Pete Stark fantasizes about Pres. Bush's motives
•Hate crime fantasies
•Real or fantasy: Obama's core value is "unity"?
•Salon Magazine and its sexual fantasies involving Sarah Palin
•Michelle Obama fantasizes that she is the first White House resident to care about military families
•Feminist imagines that all men are pro-rape and pro-domestic violence
•Rep. Barney Frank's fantasies: the mortgage crisis was caused by "conservatives"
•How reporters avoid addressing reality
•If only hate could change false to true

The Misogynist Left Mash-up

This is just a reminder, if any was needed, that liberal complaints about Rush's language should not be taken seriously.

Via GatewayPundit.

PREVIOUSLY on the issue of Sandra Fluke demanding that others pay for her to have sex:
•Liberal hypocrisy (illustrated)
•I will buy no more from Carbonite, ProFlowers, Citrix, QuickenLoans, or LegalZoom

OccupyFail: Corporations as people

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision affirming that corporations have free speech rights continues to rankle the left. At last Thursday night's Obama fundraiser protest in San Francisco, I saw this sign held by a man from Occupy San Jose:

"I'll believe Corp's are people when [San Jose] City Hall evicts one"

I explained to the protester that corporations are evicted if they don't pay their rent. That was news to him.

On the same theme, there is this sign from Occupy San Francisco (photo taken last October):

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one! -- I am the 99%"

Of course, corporations are executed, mercilessly, all the time: it is called Chapter 7 (liquidation).

At times, when dealing with people, logic is just irrelevant. In this case, in my opinion, the Occupy crowd is not expressing a legal theory about corporations; they are expressing emotional frustration with life. If conservatives/libertarians are going to respond effectively to their points, we need to address the emotion and not the logic.

PREVIOUSLY on the Occupy Wall Street movement:
•Occupy Wall Street analyzes the Greek debt problem
•"Occupy CPAC" protesters paid $60/day
•Occupy Portland mob smashes windows
•Occupy Portland blocks bridge, causes massive traffic jam
•Occupy Oakland: the devolution
•Occupy Portland explains its rape policy
•News media report on terrorists and patriots
•Occupy Portland protester loses it in front of KGW news
•Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy
•A Visit to Occupy San Francisco: photo essay
•Occupy Oakland and Marxism: a video

A liberal's core beliefs are surprisingly malleable

Prof. Glenn Reynolds writes:

CHANGE: Oh my: Majorities of liberal Democrats now support drone strikes, keeping Gitmo open.

It’s as if all that international-law, humanitarian, have-you-no-decency crap was just . . . crap. And partisan crap at that.

No secret, but nice to make it clear. To all the people who were yammering about this in 2007-2008: Don’t waste my time in the future. Or yours.

For liberals, it is important to express self-righteous moral indignation. Their feeling of moral superiority is to be taken seriously. The underlying issue is irrelevant.

Related: Michael Walsh writes: "One of the problems the Right consistently has in dealing with the Left is its touching credulity in their stated motives, instead of assessing their genuine objectives."

See also Ace of Spades' essay on moral indignation, racism, and liberal hypocrisy.

Universities are still racist

Asians reportedly are hiding their ethnicity when applying to colleges and universities. The discrimination that they face is documented, as Rich Lowry writes at National Review:

In 2005 the Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank opposed to racial preferences, looked at males applying to the University of Michigan from within the state who had no parental connection to the school. If the applicant had a 1240 SAT score and a 3.2 GPA, he had a 92 percent chance of admission if black and 88 percent if Latino. If white, he had only a 14 percent chance, and if Asian, a 10 percent chance.

Forty years ago, When a liberal talked about "affirmative action," what he meant was "keep the Jews out." Now, when a liberals says "affirmative action," he means "keep the Asians out."

RELATED: A Democrat official attacks New Mexico's Hispanic Republican Governor Susana Martinez with racist remark.

PREVIOUSLY on racism:
•Occupy Portland protesters hurl racist taunts an African American
•Democrat: "Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men"
•The subtleties of White Privilege
•Racist cupcakes
•Is witch doctor image racist?
•Obama ally: "I hate white people...."
•“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
•"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
•A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
•San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
•"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

Occupy Portland explains its rape policy

"The policy regarding contacting the police is if the survivor wants us to contact the police the sexual assault response team will contact them. If they don't want to contact the police nobody should contact the police."

The "unbiased" news media, illustrated

Hat tip: LegalInsurrection, @MichelleMalkin, Jim Treacher

Related news, as summarized by GatewayPundit, on the Occupy movement:
Dead man in Salt Lake City…
Tuberculosis in Atlanta…
‘Zuccotti Lung’ on Wall Street…
Suicide in Vermont…
Murder in Oakland…
Occupy death toll mounts

Madeline Albright accuses Herman Cain of sexism

The Washington Examiner reports:

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who served under President Clinton, attacked the embattled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain for sexism during her appearance on Morning Joe this morning.

Noting that Cain had met with Cold Warrior and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to discuss foreign policy, host Joe Scarborough asked Albright if she had met with Cain and how that meeting unfolded. It turns out, they haven't met.

"Well, he didn't call me," Albright said, "I'm the wrong gender."[Emph. added]

I didn't know that left-wing-loon was a "gender."

More seriously, isn't just like a modern Democrat to think everything is sexism or racism?  Ms. Albright has never expressed an intelligent thought on foreign policy.  Her gender is not relevant.  It is her blind-liberalism which is relevant.

PREVIOUSLY on Madeline Albright:
•Albright on alleged genocide: a half-million deaths were "worth it"
•Albright's spin on letting bin Laden get away: an underling did it
•The consequences of Carter-Clinton-Albright policy of appeasement of N. Korea
•David Zucker's funny video on the Albright-Clinton foreign policy

Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy

Michael Moore calls on the rich to give back a million dollars each. Strangely, Michael Moore (net worth: $50 million) does not offer to give back any of his own fortune:

To respond to the questioner, as shown at the end of the video, the Occupy crowd is reduced to ad hominem attacks: they shout "instigator" and chant "Who's paying you?"

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of liberal hypocrisy:
•President Obama preaches Tolerance
•Dem attack against lobbyists is led by a Dem lobbyist
•Minimum wage and hypocrisy
•UN humanitarian hypocrisy
•Eco-hypocrisy at the UN Climate Change conference
•Dems, taxes, and hypocrisy
•Eco-hypocrite of the day: movie director James Cameron
•Liberal gay bashing
•Poster child hypocrisy
•Eco-hypocrisy: Supermodel Gisele and Prince Charles
•Eco-hypocrisy: Barack Obama
•Eco-hypocrisy: Nancy Pelosi
•The ever-increasing energy use of Al Gore's mansion
•With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming
•Edwards' hypocrisy on the poor
•HuffPost blogger projects enviro-hypocrisy

A Democrat's view of the world

Journalist Nicholas D. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and currently writes for the New York Times. A few days ago, after some zoo animals escaped, Kristof tweeted:
To which, the inimitable Glenn Reynolds replied:

MESSAGE TO NICK KRISTOF: Boehner would pull out a gun and make a rug. As would many millions of other Americans.

Liberals live in an imagined state of helplessness. No wonder they are so angry.